Asian smartphone makers to cash in iPhone fail

It appears Apple’s underwhelming iPhone 4S launch has reenergized the Asian competition, mainly Samsung, HTC and LG Electronics. All three companies rely on Android as the OS of choice, but they have also dabbled in Windows Phone as of late.

Shares of Asian phone makers edged up yesterday, following a rather disappointing launch at Cupertino. In contrast, investors pulled out of Apple and some of its Asian suppliers, causing shares to dip in afternoon trading. However, it is still a bit too early for Asian smartphone makers and Google to declare victory, unless the plan to do it with a patriotic banner on an aircraft carrier.

Despite an unimpressive launch, Apple still has legions of fans gearing up to buy the new phone and it leads in the app department as well.

"Apple no longer has a leading edge, its cloud service is even behind Android; it can only sell on brand loyalty now," said Gartner analyst K.C. Lu.

Users who don’t fall for Apple’s dogma could very well look elsewhere, since the competition is already offering technically superior devices, with bigger screens and more processing power. True, the iPhone 4 got a bit cheaper, but only in the 8GB flavor, and it is still quite pricey to take on the Android crowd.

But the real problem is the looks. Apple did absolutely nothing to make the phone a bit more appealing, so it’s really not a spectacular show-off phone like the rest of its bloodline. Come to think of it, this is probably why no lost prototypes ever made it to tech blogs. People probably thought they found regular iPhones lying around pools of sick in bars.